Agh… why is it that in order to “look” sexy, many women feel they have to dress in nearly nothing? There were plenty of beautiful women on that list that didn’t have to take off their clothes to show off their beauty!

@AmberEyes: Because nakedness IS (sometimes, in the right context) sexy. And why the horror at nakedness? We as a culture would probably be far better off if we weren’t so “OH NO NAKED!!!!” whenever we saw a boob.

If a woman decides she feels sexy while nearly naked, why not? Why is it any better had she decided to wear a turtleneck?!

@AmberEyes: First, in the first page I saw most everyone was fully clothed. There were two girls in underwear, one of whom is a Playboy model. I can only guess why they posed for a photo in their underwear, but maybe it was because they wanted to?

Okay I looked through some more of the geek list and it just drove me up the wall. Actresses got big votes for wearing glasses in various roles, while a truly amazingly smart and sexy geek like Rachel Maddow is in the negative. The world is not salvageable.

Plus, the navigation is horrible. Phil Plait sent me word that both of us were in there, but I just can’t make it through all the submissions to even find us and give us pity votes. Booo!

I personally find public nudity (and by extension, publicly-posted images of nudity) disconcerting. However, I also recognize that this feeling is a product of my upbringing and culture, and is entirely arbitrary. In another time and/or place, I might have considered anything short of full coverage to be scandalous. Objectively, I know this but it’s difficult to break my programming.

@AmberEyes: I don’t think women should feel they have to take off their clothes to be sexy, but neither should they feel they’re forbidden from being comfortable with their bodies. It’s hard to pass a judgment call on them without knowing their own personal intentions.

@Rebecca: I linked it partly as a comment on that (the low standards for “geeks,” not the navigation, although that does suck as well).

Violet Blue also has a sexy geek list, though, and it’s more balanced:

@marilove:
It’s not that I feel nakedness is bad – quite the contrary, I love taking off my clothes! :)

I just feel that, especially in our society, women feel they must take off their clothes in order to be sexy. As is quite clear, it is not necessary to be naked in order to be sexy. There were quite a few men and women on that list that, even with clothes, were downright gorgeous! (And yes, some of them who were nearly naked were also quite gorgeous). But look at the list of those “on top” and you’ll notice a great deal of them are nearly naked. Are they being voted because they’re lacking clothing, or because they’re awesome people?

@AmberEyes: No, I totally feel you. I certainly dont’ think it’s necessary to be naked to be sexy, but some women feel sexy when naked, so if that’s what they want … I have no problem with it! Basically what Jen said. :)

And, no, I agree they are likely being voted because they are half-clothed, but I still don’t see a problem with them being naked. Just with the thought-process of those voting for them JUST because they are naked.

I’m not sure that that AlterNet article is very good. It represents a catastrophic oversimplification of the nature of religion, belief, and spirituality, as well as including some kind of bizarre conflations (nontheism and polytheism? Or nontheism and deism are separate?). They’re just these arbitrary categories that he’s built for himself that, it seems to me, betray a lack of familiarity with the nature and structure of a lot of modern religions.

Also, some of his statements about research into the consequences of atheism overlook the massive social factors at play–and his rough-and-tumble, random categories make determining the religious makeup of a society difficult.

Finally: there’s been a substantial amount of research into why people believe things. A couple people have written books on it.

I think Dick Cheney, Rick Warren and everyone who voted yes on prop 8 should be on it. Perhaps Dick should be on his own list, all by himself. A list of people I think could be actually be made from pure evil. You know, that black shit from the X-Files. lol.

Indeed, the top of the “sexy” list is full of actresses who, granted, are pretty sexy, but not really geeky. Most of them played a character with glasses once.
I also don’t think having mentioned in an interview that you played a video game once automatically warrants the label “geek” either. Nor does being the face in a show about video games mean you actually know that much about them.

In other words, most of the nominations are a real stretch.

But on the other hand, Danica McKellar and Kari Byron definitely are 100% nerd. And so is the lead producer from Ubisoft for example, or any of those nominated who’ve actually done more on a computer than play games or mess around on the internet, like, you know, actual programming.